I love delayed flights…

…don’t you?  Come on, the joy of getting to the airport early to try to find a parking space, parking your car, immediately going through security since you already checked in online beforehand and printed your boarding pass.  Security is a breeze (sometimes), and then you get to your gate only to find out that there is no such flight that you paid over $800 for.  Now, this is a business trip, so time is of the essence, as always.  I attempt to find out what is happening with my “flight” and of course, since I am flying Northwest Airlines, there is no one in the entire Terminal that can help me.  Really?  The Delta (Delta and Northwest are going through their merger transition) agent says “you can go back to Ticketing/Check-in and ask one of the Northwest agents.”  Wow, that’s awesome.  So, I leave the Terminal and go back to the Ticketing/Check-in section of the RDU airport.  Of course, I’ll miss my connecting flight into the MLI airport, so the gate agent says my two options are to leave at 6:00 tomorrow morning, or to leave at 6:15 pm tonight, to arrive in MLI (my final destination) at 11:40 pm.  Wow, that’s awesome.  The issue there is the fact that if I don’t get to the rental car counter by 12:00 Midnight I won’t be able to get my rental car.  Wow, that’s awesome.  Also, I have to call my hotel to confirm that I will be arriving at my hotel at around 12:30 am tomorrow morning (I’ve had my hotel confirmation taken away from me before and given to someone else when I tried to check-in at 1:00 am before, due to a delayed flight).  Wow, that’s awesome….

The joy of business travel.  It’s really not that big of a deal, as long as everything goes as planned from now on…Hopefully I’ll be able to take advantage of this time by researching the Company background information that I will be working on this week, and also time to research some near-future blog posts.  Happy Flying…

MF